As Guyana prepares to submit its first report to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the organization said on Wednesday that its Board assessed the status of eight implementing countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Norway and Trinidad and Tobago at its meeting in Kyiv on February 27-28.
The Board agreed that Nigeria and Norway had achieved satisfactory progress overall in implementing the EITI Standard. In the other cases, the Board noted progress and outlined the corrective actions needed to meet this Standard.
Trinidad and Tobago (TT) was acknowledged for having built a dynamic platform to collect, publish, and debate information about how the country’s natural resources are managed.
The transparency body said that Reports have identified gaps in TT’s revenue collection, production and cost monitoring and cadastre information. Moving forward, there are opportunities to strengthen oversight of mining licence management to ensure that information on beneficial owners are made publicly accessible, and to enhance public trust in official production and export data.
Victor Hart, Chair of the TTEITI steering committee, said the country will “continue innovating through the EITI by promoting contract transparency, environmental reporting and reaching out to midstream and downstream companies to participate in EITI implementation.”
Norway, which has supported the EITI since its inception, has achieved satisfactory progress, the transparency body said. Widely lauded as a success story in the management of oil wealth, it was the first OECD country to implement the EITI, publishing eight EITI Reports from 2008 to 2015.
In 2017, Norway was the first country to make an application to the EITI Board to mainstream EITI implementation. Timely, comprehensive and reliable information is published through the government’s Norwegian Petroleum website and in companies’ country-by-country reports.
Accordingly, the EITI Board agreed that standalone EITI Reports were no longer necessary and Norway applied to disband its EITI multi-stakeholder group. Transparency and inclusive governance are safeguarded through a range of forums that industry and civil society are using to promote good governance, including annual stakeholder meetings that address progress with EITI implementation.
After becoming a candidate of EITI in October 2017, the Guyana Government is now tasked with compiling its first annual report, which is due on April 25.
